EMAIL ADDRESSES NEEDED!

Today's Featured Biography

 
Jon Covey

It was a nice Sunday morning. Anita and I were sitting together in the Adult Bible Class (ABC). Jim Heinen was teaching from 1st Samuel. The class response was going great. We have some very smart people in the class. Everybody had excellent remarks to make.
Suddenly, very suddenly, a wild-eyed man walked through the back door. He growled, “I need somebody to pray with me.” His eyes glittered with insanity.

Jim looked at me and said, “Jon, why don’t you take him into the conference room behind the secretary’s office and pray with him.” That wasn’t a question.

“Sure,” I said. I got up and shrugged lamely to Anita before walking out. This guy had a threatening demeanor. “Thank you very much, Jim. See you on the other side,” I thought to myself, the other side being eternity.

I led the disturbed man to the back room where the pastors and elders met regularly, having a nice sofa, easy chairs, and an impressive wood-slab coffee table somebody in the congregation had fashioned from a tree he downed. Yes, there are real lumberjacks in southern Oregon. The strange-acting man sat down on the opposite side of the coffee table from me.

Neither of us spoke. I was wondering how I could help him, whom I named “Wayne Bob.”

Wayne Bob didn’t sit still long. He jumped up and pulled out a monstrous Bowie knife. I just sat there, wondering what to do. Did he think he was Zorro or something?

I got the impression that I should just relax and let my Divine partner take care of it. Wayne Bob took a step closer to me with the knife outstretched. That might be perceived as threatening but I felt calm, wondering how this would go down.

“Okay, Jon, relax and let the Lord handle this,” I said to myself.

Before I get any further into this story, I should give some background to this iffy moment.

I worked for the Los Angeles County Health Services for almost 27 years. For three of those years, I shuffled over to the Sheriff’s medical department to establish point-of-care testing for glucose-monitoring diabetic inmates. There were lots of diabetics in the jail. After three years, we succeeded in getting the LA Sheriff’s Department to be the first jail or prison system in America to ever be licensed by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) to do any point-of-care testing (POCT).

My partner in the jail medical system, Juan Pacis, is an American-born Philippino who is an expert in several forms of martial arts. He is 5’2” and almost as wide. Compact and powerful. He started training me.

While Anita practiced Israeli dancing with a group of dancers at our church, so they could dance during our Messianic worship service, I practiced the various karate katas Juan taught me. Anita videotaped every practice session and had me make copies of the videos to give to the other dancers.

Juan gave me videos of George Dillman performing all kinds of lethal and knockout strikes. George referred to these strikes as part of the pressure point technology he learned over many years.

Dillman trained Mohammed Ali in this technology, and George Foreman found out how effective it could be, even with seven-ounce boxing gloves. That stuff really works. I’ve seen punches knock out stalwart men instantly.
I never did master most of the katas during the three years in the Sheriff’s department, so I probably wouldn’t have fared well with those iron-pumped-up inmates—well, maybe. I have since forgotten most of the katas, but I still might be able to take down a non-trans girl scout.

Watch “Awesome Knock Outs” on YouTube if you want to see how Dillman knocks out and revives his sparing partners. Dillman sternly warns his viewers to not try any of his knockouts unless they know how to revive their victims, otherwise there could be permanent damage.

I got to know a few of the deputies. One of them, Marty (Officer Thomas Martin), was built like a brick sh…. One day he said, “I get the impression that you’re invincible.”

I replied, “I am.” He looked at me incredulously. I explained why. The Lord God will not permit anything to happen to me unless He okays it. Until then, nothing can touch me. I explained why in greater detail, so he would understand why I could say that. Weeks later he found out how true that was in an astounding incident, which I’ll describe.

While I was working in the Sheriff’s department, we were told by our boss that we had to go up to the North County facility, to the clinic in Sheriff Pitchess’ jail before inspectors from CAP showed up.

The sheriff, Lee Baca, was very determined to get that license on his watch—another feather in his cap for reelection. Baca was later convicted of felony obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI in 2017, well after I retired. Hey! He still owes me a picture of him with me. Oh well, I had many free lunches in the officers’ dining halls—yeah, free to me! I just hope the inmates who prepared the food didn’t spit or urinate in it.

The Pitchess jail was in a full-scale riot, but we had to make sure everything was ready for the CAP inspection. The central jail captain assured Juan and me that we would be able to get into the clinic despite the riot.
We hustled up to the north county facility and told the sergeant we had to get into the clinic. She said the entire jail was in lockdown because of the riot. Things looked quiet and mellow to me. Juan told her the central jail captain assured us that we would be able to get into the clinic. She called the captain. A few minutes later she came back and told us one of the deputies would escort us to the clinic by a secret passageway.

We returned to the central jail complex after doing our work. We came out of the parking structure and saw about 50 deputies suiting up in riot gear: helmets, faceplates, shoulder and chest pads, batons, etc. Marty was in the group. He saw us and asked, “Where are you guys coming from?”

“We were up at Pitchess,” I replied.
Marty looked at us, completely amazed. He said, “That’s where we’re going!” I could tell from his expression what he thought—I really was invincible. Lol.

Now, let’s get back to Wayne Bob. He held out his Bowie knife and pointed it at me. He said, “Here. Take my knife and hide it from me before I hurt someone.”

He handed it over to me. I thought, “Thank you, Lord.”

I took the knife into the secretary’s office and put it in a place where it would be difficult to find. I wish Deputy Marty had seen this.

After we talked and prayed, I went to the church foyer to find Pete, a detective who worked with the Grants Pass Police Department. I told him what happened with Wayne Bob. The next week, Pete told me what was going on with Wayne Bob. He was schizophrenic and hadn’t been taking his medication. He lived with his sister about a block away from the church. He visited our church a few more times before he moved to California.

I love humor and I love telling jokes and ad-libbing. My biochemistry professor, Dr. Kenneth Devore, loved that about me. I think he depended on me to keep the class awake during his lectures. I asked lots of questions, kind of like Columbo.

One day during a lecture, I told him, “I’ve been in your class for almost a year…”

He replied, “I know, Jon, I know!”

The class started laughing. Later, he thanked me because that was the only time he ever got his class to laugh.

That reminds me of my organic chemistry professor, Dr, Lloyd Ferguson. He would say things like, “Passing on and not out,” during a grueling lecture as a segue to the next topic. One time he warned us that in future lectures he said he would say, “As you lean, so I lean.” Azulene is an organic compound and an isomer of naphthalene, which is used to make mothballs.

Let’s pass on and not out…! Fergie never did make the azulene remark in later lectures. I kept waiting for it, and waiting,…, and waiting—anticipating! I think that was his plan to keep us wondering when he would say it. Nobody ever laughed in his class. He was like an unstoppable Abrams tank. He just kept on rolling through each lesson. He had lots of burdensome technical things to teach us.

Class members were thinking of ways to “elegantly” commit hari-kari. One of our organic chemistry professors, Dr. Boyd, liked elegant solutions for synthesizing organic molecules.

There are sloppy ways to synthesize organic molecules like TNT and LSD, and there are elegant ways to do it. One professor inelegantly stored a can of ether in the freezer, thinking that would keep it stable. When he took it out of the freezer, it blew up and took off his right hand. Sloppily slapping reactants together to make TNT is tantamount to suicide.

I might not make it to our 60th class reunion in September 2023 because I never took the Covid jabs, and the airlines might bar me from traveling with them. Driving from Grants Pass, OR to Denver might be too much for an old guy with the blood clotting disorder Factor V Leiden, so I better upload this autobio now just in case I don’t go to our reunion.

I did get Covid twice, and as a microbiologist thoroughly acquainted with immunology, I believe the Covid injections aren’t as good as naturally acquired immunity and might do more harm than good. Studies in years ahead might show this to be the case. This “gain of function” covid virus (thank you Dr. Fauci) makes immunity difficult to achieve no matter how it’s acquired. I had my doctor test me for covid antibodies between my infections. The result was strongly positive, so how did Covid get past my immune system?

Last year, I got an inguinal hernia. The surgeon thought the best way to repair it was to make a two-inch incision and slip in the mesh. It turned out the hernia was bigger than he estimated, so I had to have a second operation. The second time was done by laparoscopy. That fixed it, but I guess it was too much stress for my immune system and I came down with Covid again.

My wife, Anita, and I have been living on a 5-acre property 15 minutes outside Grants Pass, OR since 2011. It is a nice place with amazing views. This morning’s rain and snow episode was unusual for March 28th. When should I plant veggies in a late-arriving, lingering winter? We are still getting snow in early April. I heard northern California is getting hammered with snow.

I retired from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services at the end of 2007, two months after my first episode of atrial fibrillation (A-fib). The funny part of discovering this was waking Anita, a world-class physician, at four in the morning and telling her I thought my heart was acting funny. She grabbed my wrist and decided everything was normal. Of course! Everything is normal at four in the morning—zzzzzzz!

Never rouse a doctor at four in the morning out of a deep sleep, especially if she is sleeping peacefully. Actually, don’t call anyone out of a deep sleep at four in the morning. I mean, “Damn!” That’s when I’m sleeping and it’s so inconsiderate—especially robocalls (multiple four-letter words and other expletives deleted). At four in the morning, go shoot hoops or your dog if you can get a bead on him, but let sleeping wives lie.

We get these 4 am robocalls. I hear a heavily accented voice say, “Hello. This is your Microsoft expert. Your computer has been hacked. Please give me your bank account and social security numbers, so we can fix the problem for you.”

“Hey, what a great idea, pal. Why don’t I just give you my property title and retirement accounts as well?”

A-fib can happen at any age. It might be related to excessive physical activity like weight-lifting and daily running. I did a little of both in high school gymnastics classes and later. I spent lots of time in gymnastics classes in high school trying to be a gymnast, like my buddies Doug Boyer and Bobby Greer (both lived with me at Clayton College for Boys).

What great guys! Both were extraordinary athletes. Doug was a funny, friendly guy, and Bobby was a dream athlete. Bobby and I used to run to East High from Clayton sometimes, which was so grueling while lugging books for our classes. I wish they had popularized backpacks then. I also worked out with Bobby in the weight room at Clayton. I was a lot stronger than I looked, but that didn’t stop me from getting cowed by a bully at a café and pinball parlor near East.

A year ago, I discovered I had an inner-ear problem that screwed up my balance and kept me from doing gymnastics well. It was something easily fixed by a PT therapist here in Grants Pass, but my ignorance got in the way back then.

I developed sleep apnea, so sleeping on my back is risky, especially since I have the mutation referred to as Factor V Leiden—something I discovered when one of my coworkers asked for a liter of my blood to be a normal control, Later, she told me I wasn’t normal. I was a heterozygous Factor V Leiden mutant. So, I can understand why all the girls in the class of ’63 avoided me. I was a mutant!

Anita, my extra-special wife, is a sweet, outstanding woman, and beautiful: Phi Beta Kappa in college (pre-med) and Alpha Omega Alpha in medical school. That’s a top honor for med school.

She’s very smart. She thinks that if I had had the right childhood conditions, I could have been a shaker and mover in science.

I worked at the big general hospital seen on the TV soap “General Hospital”, which showed the mighty mothership of the 19-story LAC/USC Med Ctr in the opening credits. I worked as a clinical laboratory scientist for 20+ years, then transferred to the LA County Sheriff’s Medical Services for 3 years and finished my 26-27th years at Harbor General (LAC/UCLA Med Ctr).

I retired a bit early (62) because my mother died at 64 of congestive heart failure, and I figured I might develop the same problem and decided to maximize my retirement benefits for Anita should she outlive me. My younger brother, Bill, died in 2012 at 64.

My brother Bill and I grew up in boys’ homes in Denver, mainly at Asbury Manor for Boys at 2535 E. Asbury Ave. and Clayton College for Boys at 3801 Martin Luther King Blvd (then known as 32nd Ave).

At Asbury, my brother and I went to University Park Elementary. At Clayton, we went to Mary Harrington Elementary, Smiley Jr. High (my favorite girl whom I won’t name, known for her friendliness and extra cuteness, was in my choir class in 9th grade).

I barely graduated from East, at the bottom 10% scholastically. None of that mattered, just as long as I graduated.

I joined the Air Force in 1964. I loved the Air Force, and it loved me. I worked with the chaplains as an administrative specialist doing typing, bookkeeping, mowing the lawn, and setting up the chapel for Catholic and Protestant worship.

The Air Force was a great place for me to be. It helped me grow up mentally and physically. There was lots of scut work, but what really helped me was realizing I could do more than be a dishwasher. Those career evaluation tests in junior high and high school gave me the impression I would be lucky if I could hang onto a dishwashing job.

Three things that changed the direction of my life were on-base evening classes at the University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee, talking with a co-worker’s dependant daughter who was studying biology, and finding out that the guy who swabbed my sore throat at the base hospital was a microbiologist. Microbiology was a mouthful and it intrigued me. It sounded mysterious.

The on-base classes at USC and UT showed me that I could handle college. The girl studying biology helped me realize I could remember the things my East High biology teacher, Mr. Gallegos, taught me.

I got an honorable early discharge for education from the Air Force after 3 years, 9 months, and 7 days of service. It took me nearly 8 years to complete my requirements for a BA in Microbiology at Cal State, LA.

Being impoverished, it took several cycles of school and dropping out to work to make enough money to continue college and graduate. God had a plan for my life, and He wasn’t going to let me quit. The GI Bill got me part of the way. I don’t remember how it happened, but the State of California Social Services also contributed to my financial needs for my final year at Cal State.

Now, here I am in the waning years of life, and the only thing that really matters for all of us in our graduating class is where we will reside in eternity. Some reject God as a fantasy, and others believe they are good enough to enter heaven because of their own merits. However, only faith in Jesus Christ will open Heaven’s doors. Jesus’ death on the cross paid for all sins for all time. The only thing for us to do is trust in Jesus to be our savior.

I became acquainted with creation science after becoming a Christian during my senior year in college. In my second quarter as a senior at CSULA, I became a Christian. In Dr. Devore’s biochemistry class, he spoke about lysozyme evolving in the eye.

I began thinking about the chemical complexities of evolution and I was confronted with the question “Are you going to believe the words of men or the Word of God?”

I believed the Word of God was far more reliable and less fickle than the words of men. I looked around at my classmates who might become leaders in science. I was willing to oppose them and their commitment to evolutionary science (which is a speculative fantasy). Since then, I have spent many years studying and writing newsletter articles on topics related to creation and evolution. The articles would fill several books (two short remarks on this later).

In 2008, I discovered I had a half-brother (Lee) and half-sister (Bonnie) living in Colorado Springs. Lee invited me to sing with him on SingSnap, an online karaoke site. Lee is 9 months younger than I am. My full brother, Bill, was 9 months younger than Lee. Daddy was a busy man. We have two more older brothers of another mother who lived in San Diego. There’s a good chance we have some more siblings living in Detroit. From the things Lee and Bonnie told me about our father, it was better he was never in my life. He was very harsh and demanding.

Anita suggested I get lessons from her voice teacher, Jennifer Stuler after I made a few tries on SingSnap with Lee. Hear Jennifer on YouTube singing her original “Exotic.” It’s a bit naughty if you listen to the lyrics. Or listen to her techno “All I Do Is Wish.” She’s a mother of three and an operatic lyric soprano who loves pop.

I spent four years learning voice with Jennifer. She is the best teacher I ever had in any subject and the most expensive. My second-best teacher was Mr. Lane at Los Angeles Valley College, who brought me up to speed in algebra, geometry, and trigonometry, which made it possible for me to take calculus and analytical geometry, so “passing on and not out….”

Jennifer told me I was undoubtedly a baritone. Alan Titus might be interested in knowing this. I can sing along with most of the Bee Gees’ songs. I sang along with Josh Groben’s YouTube version of “You Lift Me Up.” Anita thought I sounded just like him, so I made a note of that on YouTube. Seven million people listened to Josh sing that song on YouTube. I was surprised he responded to my note. We had a short exchange of comments. Maybe he was trying to get me to do a duet with him just for fun. It freaked me out and I bailed.

I love singing. My buddy, Joel, and I broke out singing “Zip-a-dee-do-dah” as we walked through his 140-acre forest with our wives a few weeks ago. It was a bit early for bluebirds in our area (western bluebirds). They’re very territorial and fight constantly with their reflections in our windows.

“Give it up, dude. He’s not real!” I put cardboard over those windows to keep them from breaking their necks trying to defend their territory from these ghostly intruders.

I recently learned how to produce fully orchestrated versions of Handel’s Messiah Hallelujah Chorus using Make Music’s Finale software. Our church lost its choir director just before Christmas and I wanted to fill the void. I finished scoring the piece, but too late for Christmas. Now I’m working on integrating the orchestra with a fully articulated choir using EastWest Hollywood Choirs software and Ableton’s Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). The learning curve is long.

When I’m not doing that, I play Classic World of Warcraft for 1-2 hours each day. My grandson, Sam, introduced me to the game’s retail version about 5 years ago. He stayed with us for a year to attend our local college before returning to the Cal State system. He wanted to be a neurosurgeon and make a million dollars per year. Classic WoW doesn’t have all the goodies the Retail version has, and your avatar gets killed much, much more, getting mob-jumped frequently.

Evolutionary scientists tell us the universe was born 14.7 billion years ago in an event derisively named the Big Bang by Fred Hoyle.

Where was the stuff of the universe in eternity? Some scientists say it existed as a dimensionless subatomic particle of infinite density and temperature called the singularity.

Top scientists like Alan Guth, Arvind Borde, and Alexander Vilenkin say that any, on average, any universe, has been expanding throughout its history had an absolute beginning. This statement is referred to as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem.

Vilenkin and co-worker Audrey Mithani say the universe cannot have an eternal past in their paper, “Did the universe have a beginning?” They discussed their findings. Put the title in your search engine along with Vilenkin’s name and you can get a free copy of it from Cornell’s archives. I recommend you read it or at least look it over.

Most physicists think the universe began to exist at some point in the past. Many of them believe that the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., the Law of Entropy, did not function prior to the Big Bang. That is magical thinking. They simply don’t want to admit that something external to the material universe caused the universe.

The universe, if it did have an eternal past, would have died eons ago, long before the Big Bang, regardless of what state it was in.

Here’s some logic:
1.    Anything that began to exist had a cause.
2.    The universe began to exist.
3.    The universe had a cause.
That being the case, an immaterial entity (God) caused the universe.

We were told that when Stanley Miller and Harold Urey ran their experiments on the abiotic formation of amino acids in 1953, they showed that life could originate spontaneously.

What most chemists will not say to the public is those amino acids will not spontaneously combine to form proteins. When two amino acids join, becoming a dipeptide, they lose a molecule of water. These amino acids are surrounded by water molecules. A water molecule will split the dipeptide into two free amino acids by hydrolysis. This hydrolysis reaction is strongly favored thermodynamically.

The formation of DNA and RNA from nucleotides will not form spontaneously for the same reason.

Origin-or-life-experimenters like Leslie Orgel and Robert Shapiro struggled all their lives trying to figure out how life originated. Both died 15-20 years ago. New generations of origin-of-life scientists are still struggling with how life began. None of them have been able to come up with a plausible scenario. The origin of life is as much of a mystery today as it was 100 years ago.

I believe God created both the universe and life. I believe that faith in Jesus Christ, that He died on the cross and rose from the dead is essential to gain eternal life. Jesus said that if you confess Him before men, He will do likewise before His Father.
The jailer asked the Apostle Paul, “What must I do to be saved?”

Paul said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”

Spring planting will begin in a few more weeks. The last frost day is around April 29th here. Because winter was so late in coming. It snowed just a couple of days ago, and little hail pellets smacked our new solar panel system yesterday and the day before. It would be wise to wait until mid-May to start planting in our raised beds. Early spring flowers are already blooming, but most plants are still dormant.

I’m hoping a few of the chestnut saplings I planted from seeds last year survived winter. We have a 15’ chestnut tree I planted 5 years ago. It needs a cross-fertilizer to produce nuts. We have two walnut trees, and several hazelnuts, cherry, fig, pear, and apple trees. We also have a couple of dozen table grape vines in our vineyard.

Our neighbors have lots of meat stock, plus dozens of deer and turkeys constantly tromp through our property. I had to pound dozens of T-posts into the ground and fencing to keep the deer out of our orchard and vineyard.

Pounding T-posts into the ground caused lots of elbow and shoulder damage, but I’ve learned how to minimize that through experience, and Juan’s teaching me karate katas. Never let the energy of the strikes come back into you. I never thought that would apply to T-post pounding until I was nearly crippled. As Juan said, “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger.”

Well, before I die from a stroke or other catastrophic event, I better upload this.

Anita could edit this essay to perfection, but I think I'd better stop before I think of other amazing moments, like the time I chased down a purse-snatcher at an Alpha-Beta supermarket and arrested him.

God loves you all,
Jon

VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES